


Sleep Like Wolves

by Rotpeach



Series: The Great Tumblr Rehoming of 2018 [31]
Category: Boyfriend to Death (Visual Novels)
Genre: Angst, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Neighbors, Other, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-27 17:26:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17166170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rotpeach/pseuds/Rotpeach
Summary: Your new neighbor, Vincent, is a veteran with a drinking problem. Looking out for him slowly wears down your patience and your self-restraint.





	Sleep Like Wolves

**Author's Note:**

> an old personal favorite.
> 
> title is a katie jane garside track

You fucking hate your new neighbor.

And that sounds awful, doesn’t it? That sounds like you’re a heartless monster who can’t show even the slightest bit of sympathy, and you’re told as much whenever you dare call him _“difficult,”_ which is kind of like calling stab wounds _“mildly irritating.”_

“Difficult?” the woman who lives a few doors down repeats incredulously, sounding scandalized. “He was in a goddamned _war_ , what do you want from him?”

You throw your hands up in a placating gesture, insisting, “Look, I don’t mean it like that.”

“Then how did you mean it?”

You have the displeasure of running into her from time to time when you run down to get the mail, finding her lingering in the dimly-lit apartment lobby. Her questions about how you’re doing gradually shift focus to the man who just moved in across the hall from both of you, and you are inevitably berated for not being supportive enough when you voice even a minor frustration.

“You’re the only one he confides in,” she chastises. “You really need to be a little more understanding.”

“I am understanding,” you protest, checking your mail box and trying to be discreet in walking away from her.

“And patient.”

“I am the very picture of patience,” you insist, pressing the button to call the elevator behind your back.

“And really listen when he talks to you.”

“Look,” you say tiredly, “I’m doing my best, alright? I feel for the guy, I really do, it’s just…sometimes, it’s three in the morning, and I’ve got places to be in a few hours, and—!”

“Well, you just let me know, then,” she says indignantly. “I’d be happy to relieve you of your _burden_ and show some basic human decency to someone in need.”

You are not a violent person, but at times, you have dreams where she falls down the stairs.

“I mean it,” she goes on. “If you need help, just say so.”

“Sure thing,” you tell her, slipping into the elevator the moment the doors open, relaxing when she turns around instead of stepping in with you.

Your relief is short-lived when you hear her say, in a far sweeter tone than she was just using with you, “Oh, Vincent! How was your day?” and you begin jabbing the “door close” button at light speed. You hear a low, rough laugh and a, “Not bad, thanks,” just as the doors start to slide shut and take a deep breath.

A hand jams in between the doors, prompting them to open again, and the new neighbor lets himself into the elevator, crowding you against the back wall. “Just who I wanted to see,” he says, giving you a toothy grin. “How’re you doing?”

“Fine,” you say stiffly.

“Yeah?” You hear the door shut and the elevator rattles a bit before moving. Vincent braces an arm on the wall beside your head, leaning in inches from your face. “You sound kinda tense,” he says. “Me and a few buddies are going for drinks tonight. Thought I’d extend an invitation.”

“Oh, hey, that’s nice of you,” you say, eyes flicking past him to see if you’ve reached your floor yet. “But I can’t, I’ve got work in the morning. You know how it is.”

“Sure. You work this Saturday?”

“Uh. Yeah.”

“How about Sunday?”

“Probably.”

His eyes narrow. “When don’t you work?”

The elevator beeps and the doors open. “I’ll have to check my schedule,” you say vaguely as you carefully duck under his arm to get past him. Vincent follows you just a step behind. You walk quickly, pulling your keys out of your pocket.

He stops you when he says, “Look, you can just say no. You’re not gonna hurt my feelings.”

You turn around and find him lingering in the hall, hands in his pockets, not quite meeting your eyes. Contrary to what the busybody down the hall thinks, you are capable of feeling sympathy. “It’s not like that,” you tell him. “It’s just…well, we’re neighbors, it’d be kind of awkward, you know?”

“Doesn’t have to be.” You raise a brow and he shrugs. “Doesn’t have to be anything too involved, I mean. We could keep it casual.”

The thing is, you don’t hate this part of Vincent. You don’t hate the guy who keeps to himself except when you happen to run into him in the lobby as he’s on his way somewhere, inviting you out for drinks with a flirtatious grin. There’s a part of you that always hesitates when he says things like this, that wonders if it’d really be so bad to just say yes for once.

“I’ll think about it,” you allow, and he flashes a playful smile before you go inside and shut the door.

*

You’re awoken at two in the morning by someone pounding on your door and groan, dragging out of bed. Vincent is standing in the hall, completely shitfaced with someone’s blood on his shirt.

“Hey,” he says, and he does have the decency to sound at least a little sheepish, “can I crash with you?”

You’re still rubbing the sleep from your eyes. “Why?” you ask tiredly.

“I, uh,” he grins lopsidedly, “lost my keys somewhere. Maybe at the bar, I dunno.”

You wish the busybody living down the hall would be overly nosy when it actually matters so she could see your saintly patience in action, because you squint up at Vincent’s pleading expression as he sways in your doorway and give a long-suffering sigh.

“Yeah,” you relent, “okay,” and step aside to let him in. You catch him by the forearm before he gets too far into your apartment. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, not so fast. You’re covered in blood.”

“Ah, yeah.” He laughs and runs a hand through his hair self-consciously, like he forgot. “Oops.”

“Oops, huh?” you mutter, holding out a hand expectantly. Vincent peels his shirt off and you wince when you take the sweat-soaked and bloodstained garment from him, holding it gingerly with as few fingers as possible and throwing it into the sink to soak in cold water. “You pick a lot of fights.”

He shrugs, rolling his shoulders until you hear a sickening crack. “There are a lot of assholes. Let me do that.”

“I’d rather you sit down so you don’t get sick,” you tell him, but he predictably chooses not to listen, crowding you by the sink and wrenching his shirt from you. You throw your hands up in defeat and lean back against the kitchen counter, arms crossed over your chest, and you watch him for a lack of anything better to do. Vincent has surprising dexterity and focus for someone who reeks so heavily of alcohol, trying to rub the blood out of his clothes beneath the water, the muscles of his arms straining and tensing. He catches you staring out of the corner of his eye and grins.

“See something you like?” he teases.

This kind of thing was flattering and even a little humorous the first time it happened, but Vincent has spent nearly half of the few weeks he’s been at this apartment complex living with you, coming in after a long night of drinking and beating the shit out of some poor bastard to pass out on your couch and wander out sometime in the morning.

You hold his gaze. “How much did you drink?”

He returns his attention to the sink as though embarrassed. “Enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“To stop thinking about it.”

He gets this faraway look in his eyes and lonely tone that makes you hesitant to question him any further. This happens, too, every night. You know what your neighbor would say. You know she’d insist you give her a call so she can make up for your failure in providing comfort, but honestly, you don’t think either of you are qualified to help him with whatever demons he has.

“Why do you keep letting me in if you hate me so much?”

He says it so quietly you almost think you misheard him, but you look up and find him staring hard at you, flirtatious grin replaced with a solemn expression.

“What? No,” you stammer, “no, Vincent, I don’t…I never said—!”

“You don’t have to say it.”

“I don’t hate you,” you insist, albeit weakly. “I just…I hate _this_. I’m tired. I don’t know how to help you.”

“I don’t need your help,” he grumbles.

You fight the urge to roll your eyes. “Then you need to help yourself. I can’t keep doing this, and you probably can’t either. You’re going to get yourself killed one of these days. You need to get yourself together—!”

The rest of what’s turning into a lecture for your delinquent neighbor dies in your throat when he’s suddenly in front of you, slamming his hands onto the counter on either side of your body and leaning in so you can smell the booze on his breath and—

Blood? Is that really blood you smell? It must be coming from the sink. You hope so.

“You think I haven’t tried?” he growls. “You think I like being so fucked up I can’t hold a job for more than a few days? You think I asked for this?”

Every muscle in your body locks up in fear and you can feel yourself shaking. You wonder if he’s going to assault you in your own apartment, if he’s going to leave you bloody and bruised on your kitchen floor because you crossed him. When he moves, you flinch and squeeze your eyes shut, but the hit you’re expecting never comes.

You hear him take a deep breath, hold it in, and exhale slowly. Reluctantly, you open one eye. Vincent has his back to you, his hands clenched into fists at his sides as his shoulders heave. You stay glued to the counter, too frightened to move.

Eventually, he turns on his heel and leaves the kitchen, dropping onto the couch without a word to you.

You spend a few minutes moving his shirt around in the water, unable to get the last of the stains out with your hands shaking, and muster up the courage to creep past him to your bedroom. You feel his eyes on your back as you go, but neither of you speak, and you’re thankful for that.

Sometime before sunrise, in a hazy state of half-sleep, you think you hear your bedroom door open and a hand rest on your forehead. It feels like an apology.

*

The garbage disposal stops working.

It lets out a terrible metallic sound and makes the whole sink shake when you try to use it. You manage to corner the landlord in the lobby when he comes by to check the rent box, and he half-heartedly apologizes for missing all three of your emails and two of your calls to reach him about it. You wait by the elevators, massaging your temples to soothe an oncoming headache.

You hear the lady from down the hall call your name in an overly friendly tone and debate taking the stairs instead. “How are you?” she asks, immediately followed by, “Did Vincent ever come home last night?”

“I’m,” _not his fucking keeper,_ “fine, thanks. And yeah, he did. He stopped by to talk for a little while.”

“Oh, well that’s good. I’m glad. I think you’re really helping him.”

You’re absolutely certain you aren’t.

“You let me know if you need any help, alright? I’ll be right over, doesn’t matter what time.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“I’m serious. I don’t mind,” she insists.

Vincent comes through the front doors at that moment, and you’re almost glad to see him because of how quickly her attention shifts. He gets on the elevator with you, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets.

“So,” he says in a leading tone.

You meet his eyes hesitantly.

“You still work this weekend, or can you squeeze in some free time?”

Honestly, you’re not sure how much of his drunken escapades he actually remembers in the morning. From the way he acts, your guess is that the whole night is just a blur. “I still work,” you say, looking forward to falling face-first into bed.

“Ah well. Thought I’d ask.”

“Did you find your keys?”

“Huh?” He laughs. “Oh, right. How’d you know about that? Yeah, they turned up. A buddy of mine was holding onto ‘em, we met up earlier.”

“Good.”

“Glad he was paying attention, I sure as hell wasn’t. I don’t have myself together too well right now.” You’re caught off-guard by the hint of something vulnerable in his voice and find him staring at the grimy carpet like he’s trying to find something he lost down there.

“You’re doing your best,” you say gently.

Vincent looks surprised to hear you speak, staring at you blankly. But then he gives you a crooked and somewhat endearing smile, and you think, for just a moment, that you might have done something right.

*

You let out an undignified squeak when Vincent’s hands go down your pants, digging his fingers into your hips.

(Tonight, he says he’s tried to get into his apartment for five minutes but can’t get the key into the lock because everything’s blurry.)

He laughs low against your ear and presses against you from behind, pinning you to the kitchen sink as his shirt slips from your hands and falls into the water.

“Vincent, what the fuck are you doing?”

“What do you think?” he murmurs, and you jump when he teasingly nibbles on the shell of your ear.

You tug at his wrists. “I think you’re drunk.” One of his hands wanders around to the front of your body and massages the heated flesh between your legs, and your body arches into his touch. You bite your lip to hold back a moan.

He laughs. “I think you like this.”

“Stop. I’m not doing this with you.” You know you don’t sound terribly convincing, but you can’t help it. He grinds his hips into you and you can feel how hard he is through both of your clothes. A spike of arousal shoots through you but you try to ignore it, angrily shoving him away from you and turning to face him.

“Fuck you,” you say. “You think you can just do whatever you want? One of us is going to remember this in the morning, and it’s not going to be you. This isn’t going to mean anything to you, and I have to look you in the eye and pretend everything’s fine, like you aren’t self-destructing in front of me and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Vincent stands there, wide-eyed, hands dropping to his sides. You’re breathing heavily as you come down from your red-hot anger, realizing you’ve snapped at him only once it’s so quiet that your own heartbeat is unbearably loud. You wait a couple seconds, holding your breath for retaliation of some kind, but he doesn’t do anything. He just stands there.

“You’re…” You struggle to find the right words. “You’re suffering, I know you are. I know you’re in a tough spot. And you keep coming here because you want help, but I don’t know how to help you. I don’t know what to do, Vincent, I’m sorry.”

You stand across from each other in the kitchen, in a horribly uncomfortable silence, until Vincent says, “This would help me,” and reaches for you again.

You catch his wrist and lead him into the living room, urging him to sit down on the couch. “Get some sleep,” you tell him gently.

He doesn’t look at you, staring down at the floor with a remarkably lucid-looking gaze, but you think he must just be tired.

*

In your dreams, he holds you down and takes you from behind.

That seems about right. That seems like him.

He buries his face in the crook of your neck and holds onto you so tightly that he leaves bruises on your skin.

When you wake up, you try to find them, and you’re filled with disappointment and maybe regret.

*

Vincent looks at you when he gets into the elevator, really looks, like he’s seeing something new for the first time. “You look like shit,” he says. “What happened?”

_He did. He fucking happened. He moved in and ruined your goddamned life._

“My garbage disposal isn’t working,” you say. It doesn’t make sense as an excuse. You don’t care.

“You want me to take a look at it?”

You shrug. He shrugs back, like he’s washing his hands of the conversation. You stupidly keep it alive. “Actually, yeah,” you say, “I’d appreciate it.”

He raises a brow.

“Please,” you add as an afterthought.

You think this is the first time Vincent has actually come over during the day, the first time he’ll actually remember walking in. You watch him lean over your sink like he has so many times before, sticking a hand down the drain. You cross the kitchen behind him and open the refrigerator. “You want something to drink?” you offer.

“What do you have?”

“Flavored water. Mountain Dew. Whiskey.”

“Little early for drinking.”

You’re already twisting off the bottle cap, taking a large swig and leaning back against the fridge. “Your loss.”

Vincent stops whatever he’s doing in the sink and turns to look at you over his shoulder. He doesn’t ask what’s wrong but he’s staring hard, trying to figure you out. “Have a rough day?”

“I’ve had a rough few weeks,” you admit.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t worry about it.” You take another swig. “I’m supposed to be looking out for you, not the other way around.”

He cracks a smile. “Why?” he asks. “Because that bitch down the hall chews you out otherwise?”

Your eyes widen and you break eye contact, not sure how to answer.

He turns to give you his full attention, arms crossed over his chest. “It’s all she talks about,” he says. “I might’ve overheard a conversation or two.”

“Oh.”

“So what is this?” he asks, gesturing across the space between you vaguely. “What’s going on right now?”

“I don’t…I just thought….” You let out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know what I thought.”

“Let me ask that in a different way,” he says, snatching the whiskey from you and downing in the rest in a few gulps. He slams the bottle down on the counter beside him and then he cages you in between him and the refrigerator. “Did you just invite me in here to talk?” he asks, his breath hitting your lips. “Or did you actually want to do something?”

You trail a hand up over his face and then grip the back of his head, pulling him down closer. “I just want to get this out of my system,” you say. You’re not sure who you’re trying to convince.

Vincent grins. “Didn’t realize you were so frustrated.”

“It’s your fault,” you say, emboldened by the pleasant tingling at the corners of your mind that tells you the alcohol is finally doing its job. “It’s all your fault. You won’t leave me alone.”

“You want me to?”

“No,” you say, and you think you must sound a little scared because he nearly crushes you in a tight embrace.

“Sure you wanna do this now?” he asks. You’re almost frustrated by how thoughtful and nice he’s being all of the sudden.

“It’s now or never,” you warn him, biting back a gasp when his hands disappear beneath your shirt and feel along the bare expanse of your skin.

(You hate him. You fucking hate him. You hate how he shows up every night shitfaced and more of a mess than before, touching you, confiding in you, laying out on the couch like he owns the damn place and then disappearing in the morning before you wake up like none of it even matters. His visits eat up all the hours you should be sleeping as you stand beside him, not because you really need to be there but because you see him tense up when you try to walk away, you see him lean over the kitchen counter with his head in his hands and you wonder how many goddamned skeletons are in his closet, and it _hurts_ to see him like that.

That doesn’t really sound like hate when you think about it.

You try not to think about it.)

He fucks you right there against the refrigerator, slow, deep thrusts that have you arching your back impatiently and scraping your nails down his chest. “Stop that,” he groans, and you feel him shaking as he tries to be careful. “You’re gonna snap like a twig if I fuck you any harder.”

“This is nothing,” you tell him,

(and it’s not the whiskey talking, it really isn’t. It’s all you, just with enough alcohol to make you honest)

meeting his thrusts with a roll of your hips. “Go ahead.”

“I’m warning you—!”

“I don’t care,” you say firmly.

You collapse in a heap when he suddenly lets go of you, letting out a startled yelp when he pushes you down on your stomach and positions himself behind you, and you laugh just a little bit under your breath. “Knew it,” you mutter. “Knew you’d be into doggy style—!”

He cuts you off by filling you completely in one thrust, your hips meeting, his palms falling on either side of your body as he pants with exertion. It stings, and you whimper, trying to brace yourself on the floor when he starts moving, slamming into you harder than before. “You wanted it like this, right?” he taunts, setting a brutal pace that makes it hard for you to stay upright. You’re too proud to tell him to slow down

(and maybe you’re hoping that there’ll be something left this time, that you’ll have something to hold onto after he’s gone, lines on your knees from the linoleum floor or his nail marks on your hips).

*

Apparently, you pass out, because you wake up on the couch covered in a blanket. Vincent is long gone, but you glance down at yourself and find your skin littered in bite marks.

He doesn’t come back that night, but you have trouble sleeping anyway.

*

He doesn’t come back the night after that, either. In fact, he doesn’t come home at all. He doesn’t come back at midday from god knows where, doesn’t get on the elevator with you, doesn’t flirt with you on the way up, and he doesn’t show up on your doorstep in the ungodly early hours of morning.

The neighbor down the hall is having a conniption, asking if he seemed strange the last time you talked to him, if he said he was going somewhere, if he sounded sad at all. You shrug and your apparent lack of concern makes her angrier, and you get angry right back.

It isn’t that you don’t care. You do care. You probably care too much.

He might as well be there with you, because you have another sleepless night and wonder if he’s winning whatever fight he’s in.

*

You work overtime and drag home even later than Vincent normally would. You tell yourself you’ve got nothing better to do.

(You also know nobody’s waiting for you at home.)

You’re walking through the parking lot trying to remember which pocket your keys are in when you hear a low, animalistic growl somewhere in the dark behind you. Every hair on the back of your neck stands on end and you’re overwhelmed by a feeling of dread, instinctual fear hitting you like a punch to the gut. You turn around, not sure what to expect, and freeze.

You don’t know what it is. You don’t really look too long. You just see something big, towering over you, eyes glinting in the dark, saliva dripping from its maw, and you start running.

You hear it run after you.

(One time, Vincent just cried.

He dropped down on the couch, put his head in his hands, and cried.

He’d shoved his way past you when you opened the door and whatever reprimand you were about to give him died on your lips, despite the blood dripping off of him and all over your sofa. You didn’t know what to do. Asking what was wrong seemed stupid, but so did just standing around doing nothing.

So you sat down next to him, put a hand on his shoulder, and you just stayed there.)

You jam your hands into your pockets, desperately feeling for your keys, hope igniting in your chest and dying just as quickly when your fingertips brush against loose change. It’s gaining on you. You can feel it breathing down your neck.

(“Is it hard adjusting to civilian life?” you’d tried asking once. He’d just shrugged.

“You still in touch with any of your military friends?” you’d tried another time.

“Kind of,” he’d said vaguely.

“You have any really good days when you were overseas?” you’d said.

And Vincent had looked at you with startlingly clear eyes and said, “That’s not what I’m thinking about.”)

Just as you find your keys, they’re knocked from your hand as something slams into you. Your body hits the pavement hard and you feel it pressing its weight against you, keeping you pinned to the ground. It’s like a wolf, but bigger and stronger and tearing into you with claws that are more like human hands, wetting its fur with your blood. Your terrified screams fill the parking lot and that just seems to make it even more excited, its jaws closing down on your shoulder as it takes a bite out of your flesh.

(“Jesus,” you muttered. “Sorry, that was stupid. I just assumed.”

“Nah, it’s fine. That would make sense, wouldn’t it?” He shrugged and looked away, glancing at the cityscape glittering outside your window. “It’d be nice if that was all I had to worry about.”

You meant to follow his gaze but you got stuck looking at his face, his eyes filled with regret. “It’s funny,” you said, more to yourself than to him, “you almost look sober right now.”

“I am.”

“Huh?”

“I am sober,” he said. “I always am when I come here.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Bullshit.”

He was quiet for a long time. Then he turned to you and grinned. “Yeah, I’m just fucking with you,” he said, and you gave him a playful shove, saying you almost believed him.)

“Vincent,” you whimper. You don’t mean to. You don’t know why. It’s just the first thing that comes to mind, the first name you think of and the first comforting memory that floats to the surface, so you cling to it.

You feel the thing’s entire body shudder above you, like a chill ran down its spine, before it starts to tear you apart again.

You wonder where Vincent went.

You hope he’s okay.

You hope—

*

In your dreams, he looks lost.

He wanders around the city like a stray dog and no one lets him in.

But he turns you down when you open your door. “You deserve better than someone like me,” he says with a bitter smile, no matter how much you insist that you don’t care, that you’ve wanted him all along and you’ve just never said it.

“Just come in, Vincent,” you say in frustration. “You’re going to get hurt out here.”

“If I go in there, I’m just going to hurt you.”

He’s wrong, you tell him he’s wrong, but he doesn’t listen.

He walks away and he leaves you in your open doorway with a million things you wish you would’ve said sooner on the tip of your tongue.

*

You wake up attached to an EKG machine, the rhythmic beeping gently waking you from a fitful sleep. You’re weak and groggy and you feel like you were hit by a train. The nurse tells you it was a dog and you don’t feel like arguing so you just nod.

Then she gives you a note and says someone left it for you while you were still out.

It’s a scrap of paper torn out of something, a hastily-scrawled message in pen blurred at the corners by damp spots.

 _“Moving out,”_ it says, _“sorry for the trouble. Take care of yourself.”_

It isn’t signed.

(It doesn’t matter.)

You crumple it up and drop it into your lap, staring into space. You fucking hate him. You tell yourself you won’t forgive him.

You furiously wipe away your tears.


End file.
